The reception was being held in the billiard room. All the tables removed, and the carpets rolled back, this was filled with as dire a set of bores as you’ll find outside a book launch. I grabbed another glass from the butler and inched my way through the crowd towards one of the lower candelabras where I could light another cigarette. Over in a corner, the Reverend Dr Robinson had finished what might have been his second rant on the impropriety of having made C.S. Lewis Archbishop of Canterbury. He’d now buttonholed Kenneth Tynan and was explaining the sacramental qualities to be found in the smuttier parts of D.H. Lawrence. Tynan looked in my direction and pulled a most lascivious face. I avoided his eye and made for a clear space over by the window. Foot was staring at me. I smiled back and shook my head. Under other circumstances, I’d have thrown myself head first through the opened window and tried making my way out of the grounds. But I could feel his bracelet chafing my wrist, and was neither drunk enough nor desperate enough to test exactly how far his new liking for me stretched.
“I do think, Dr Markham,” someone small and intense and slightly foreign cried as he came over and breathed halitosis into my face, “that you have made a brave stand against racial hatred.” I gave the creature a blank stare and looked into my glass to see how much of the twelve ounces of Krug might be left. He ran fingers through his wiry hair and struck a pose. “I have made a study of the guilt that is imposed upon those whose only ‘crime’ is diversity. It is not you who are guilty of murder. It is the society that has imposed a racial and sexual discourse that leaves people like you with no choice but to lash out.” He rambled on for five minutes about the need for remodelling every police force in England into a centralised system where half of all the officers would be homosexuals and specially imported coloureds.
“Our task,” he suddenly barked in no particular direction, “is to break down the false distinction between the so-called ‘policeman’ and the so-called ‘criminal’, in the first place by a programme of reciprocal role-playing in which the police are encouraged to engage in so-called ‘criminal’ acts while uniformed ‘criminals’ take over so-called ‘police’ duties. ‘Police’ and ‘criminals’ alike will then come to share a sense of social grievance, realising that they are equally victims of an unjust, class-oriented, racialist and consumerist society. They will gradually be enabled to become equal members of the fully caring society that all people of good will are trying to build.”
I looked over at Foot and envied him. He’d only been grabbed by some bearded man in a caftan who was braying on about compulsory metrication and a decimal currency. But Macmillan was now beside me, a reassuring hand on my arm.
“Dear boy,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Nicholas Kaldor, who wants to discuss your work on our recovery from the Great Depression. His theory, that the time has come for taking Keynes seriously, might be of interest to you.”
“Until we achieve this goal,” the shrivelled foreigner was now raving at the top of his voice, “our society will remain a guilty society. But it is not only our society which is guilty….” Macmillan blenched and tightened his grip to lead me firmly back into the main scrum. Through the insulation of five bodies, I heard the demented scream of “WE ARE ALL GUILTY!” It sounded as if from all corners of the room at once, and silenced every other discussion for a few seconds. Then someone beside me struck up again about re-imposing excise duty on tobacco and using the proceeds for a government campaign against smoking, and the economist Macmillan had mentioned was into a smooth patter about how import controls and printing banknotes might double our rate of economic progress to fourteen or even twenty per cent.
I drank more and more champagne and smoked, and tried not to listen too hard to the drivelling opinions of everyone in the room. There was talk of censoring the press and locking up anyone who breathed the word “nigger”. There was talk of lowering the income tax threshold to force married women out to work. Somebody who’d drunk far too much was shambling about and bellowing “Lovely, lovely lesbians” to anyone he could lean against. Once or twice, I heard Kenneth Tynan’s shout of “Let it all hang out!” Someone had found a guitar, and was singing in a put-on Liverpool accent that all the world needed was love. Where Macmillan had found this lot was a mystery. Why he thought them worth bringing down to Birch Grove to share his revolution wasn’t worth considering. All told, he’d gathered round himself a proper Academy of Projectors. Given half a chance, these nutters would turn England into something unrecognisable and distinctly scary. By comparison, Michael Foot was almost sane. All he wanted, after all, was an excuse to murder everyone with a decent coat on his back or who might dare give him and his friends a funny look.
And now Foot was beside me. Incongruous in a dinner suit, he flashed me a chilly smile.
“Don’t tell me I wasn’t right about you and Powell,” he whispered. “My men have been scanning the darkness beyond the gates. They’ve now detected heat patterns all about the house that can only be human.” I tried to focus on him and see only one face instead of the two that simply couldn’t be.
“Well, Michael,” I giggled tipsily, “I suppose you’ll have to miss dinner. Do you suppose your Russian friends might surface a few hours early?” He shook his head and laughed.
“Harold may think publication to this lot is the same as unstoppable publication to the whole world,” he said. “Or he may have something else up his sleeve. You can be sure I’m still working to Plan A.”
I caught hold of a mantelpiece and steadied myself against the urge to sit down on the floor and bury my head in my hands. I tried to think of something witty. But this part of the nightmare was finally over, and the dinner bell was ringing. Macmillan had broken away from what may still have been a lecture on the need to abolish juries in civil cases and allow majority verdicts in the criminal courts, and was ushering us towards the big dining room.
I staggered out into the hall, and tried to get myself in order. But Foot was still beside me. He put his right arm about me and led me towards the servants’ staircase that led to the upper floors. I’d last been this way with Krellburger. The champagne allowed me to think I should feel disquiet as I went there again—but didn’t let me feel more than dizzy.
“They really are out there, Anthony,” Foot said, pushing the night binoculars back into my hands. We stood on the flat roof that covered the new extension to Birch Grove. One of his big men stood behind us with an umbrella to shelter us from the rain that now fell in cold, steady sheets. “It may be that one of Harold’s ‘friends’ will give the signal when the card has been played. It may be that the half dozen we’ve so far spotted are waiting for reinforcements. Whatever the case, they are out there, I assure you. And they don’t intend anyone to get out of here on four wheels or two legs without being arrested.”
“It doesn’t seem to worry you,” I said. I looked again into the binoculars. A smoke out here in the cold, and Foot’s bony fingers clutching at my arm, had sobered me pretty well. Now, I could see the white shapes he’d mentioned, moving purposefully about against a dappled background that reminded me of an overexposed negative. They must have been half a mile away. Mostly, they kept behind the trees and bushes. I thought of the helicopter behind me. It was a darker blur in the general darkness. The pilot was nowhere to be seen. “Have you been laying mines round the house?” I asked with a sudden thought.